# 1303 (7/31) "Washington and the Media Continue to Cover for Muslims. Why? / New Chinese Persecution

"WASHINGTON AND THE MEDIA CONTINUE TO COVER FOR MUSLIMS. WHY?"- Dale Hurd, Hurd on the Web, July 16, 2015, http://blogs.cbn.com/hurdontheweb/archive/2015/07/16/washington-and-the-media-continue-to-cover-for-muslims.-why.aspx

The only thing surprising to me about the terrible tragedy in Chattanooga [in which 5 military personnel were killed] is that it happened on a Thursday. Friday is Islam's holy day and the day that devout Muslims usually choose to offer their blood sacrifice to Allah by killing infidels. Maybe the suspect, 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez of Hickson, Tennessee, just couldn't wait another day to be awarded his virgins for "martyrdom."

Amazingly, the FBI, according to news reports, initially said it was trying to determine whether this was terrorism or a simple criminal act. Or maybe it was "workplace violence” like what happened at Ft. Hood in 2009 when another Muslim went on a murderous rampage. FBI, here’s a tip for you: This tweet 10 minutes before the shootings. "O Americans Dogs soon YOU Will see wonders #Chattanooga #USA #ISIS. (This Twitter account has since been suspended) Abdulazeez also wrote in his blog, "We ask Allah...to give us a complete understanding of the message of Islam, and the strength (to) live by this knowledge, and to know what role we need to play to establish Islam in the world."

Cue President Obama again saying another slaughter of Americans by a devout Muslim is "not Islam." I feel so much better. Do you think Muhammad, after beheading 900 Jewish men in Banū Qurayẓah, said, "You know, that isn’t Islam. I should stop this workplace violence."

The government's disinformation campaign about Islam started with George W. Bush's idiotic statement that 9/11 wasn’t about Islam. If you possess any common sense at all, you know you're being lied to and that Washington and big media are not on your side.

Why do the government and media continue to cover for Muslims? Here's one reason: Barack Obama’s 2008 election vow to fundamentally change America was about bringing to America the cultural Marxism that has been destroying the civic fabric of Europe; to weaken America and to make it multicultural and unexceptional. This is the Left’s Utopia. It pushes down Christianity, traditional values, and patriotism while exalting non-Western cultures and religions. In Europe this has bred crime, civil strife, and tribalism. But because cultural Marxism is also the ruling orthodoxy in most big media newsrooms, reporters and editors couldn't be happier with this president and demolition job he's done to America.

This is why the government and media continue to minimize the threat of Islam and even encourage the spread of such an intolerant religion; one that teaches that homosexuals and unbelievers should be killed and treats women like property. Because the Left cares more about getting rid of Christianity and traditional values.

And this is not going to stop until enough Americans stand up and take their nation back.

[bold and italics emphasis mine]
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"CHINA'S NEW WAVE OF PERSECUTION"- Gary Lane, The Global Lane, July 16, 2015: http://blogs.cbn.com/globallane/archive/2015/07/16/chinas-new-wave-of-persecution.aspx

The Chinese government is at it once again - this time, launching the biggest crackdown against human rights advocates since 1983.That according to Bob Fu, president of the Midland, Texas-based China Aid organization.

This latest wave of persecution is extensive and involves the arrest, detention, interrogation, and even disappearance of more than 200 attorneys and human rights workers in more than 24 Chinese provinces and municipalities. The roundup began last July 9 with the arrest of human rights lawyer Wang Yu. After she disappeared, more than 100 attorneys signed a letter demanding to know her whereabouts. That's when many of the signatories were targeted and some also "went missing."
The Chinese government contends many of the lawyers have received support from foreigners and are involved in a plot to cause public disturbance throughout China.

Why is the crackdown happening now? The new National Security Law grants officials more flexibility in targeting perceived threats to Chinese Communist Party rule. Also, the recent economic downturn may be to blame. Party officials fear a few lawyers--and perhaps Christians--could easily stir up public sentiment against the government at a time when many citizens are suffering from unemployment, or financial loss.

In addition to the crackdown against the human rights lawyers (many have taken religious liberties cases) is a continued crackdown against government registered, Three Self Patriotic Churches. Several have been destroyed in recent months, and at least 1,200 (according to China Aid sources) have been forced to remove crosses from atop their church buildings.

However, there is some good news. The Chinese church will continue to grow despite--and because of--this latest round of persecution. Keep praying---

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

# 1302 (7/30) "Evil In America"

"EVIL IN AMERICA" - Ben Shapiro | Jul 29, 2015;
http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2015/07/29/evil-in-america-n2031668/page/full

     This week, the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group dedicated to unmasking the atrocities committed by taxpayer-funded abortion juggernaut Planned Parenthood, released its latest in a series of undercover videos about the organization. In this video, Dr. Savita Ginde, vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, calmly explains to the undercover reporter that the organs of babies killed in the womb can be sold separately. "I think a per-item thing works a little better," she tells the faux buyer while standing over a tray of kidney and spinal cord from a recently aborted baby.

The tape sounds like something from the laboratory of Dr. Josef Mengele. But to the left, the murder of the unborn is routine. Former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defended Planned Parenthood, stating that Planned Parenthood has "provided essential services for women," calling the videos "an attack against a woman's right to choose." Presumably, she then ran out of other euphemisms for the butchering of the unborn.

Meanwhile, former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee drew heavy media fire slamming President Obama's decision to guarantee both Iran's regional power and nuclear weapons within a decade. Huckabee stated, "This president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them of the door of the oven."

Huckabee's invocation of the Holocaust to describe Obama's facilitation of a genocidal anti-Semitic regime offended President Obama significantly more than a similarly timed tweet from Ayatollah Khamenei containing imagery of an Obama silhouette with a gun to its head. Obama whined, "The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are just part of a general pattern we've seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren't so sad." Clinton said she was "disappointed and I am really offended personally. ... I find this kind of inflammatory rhetoric totally unacceptable." She does not, however, find the prospect of a regionally dominant Iran lording over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and building up terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, all while the United States provides a shield for Iran's nuclear program. The real problem, she and the left believe, lies in likening Obama's Iran policy to Western malfeasance with regard to Hitler.

The left's willingness to participate in Planned Parenthood's genocide against the unborn and the Iranian government's planned genocide against the Jews speaks to the nature of evil. Americans are fearful of invoking Hitlerian analogies because Hitler is seen, wrongly, as a sort of evil apart from the norms of humankind -- he must have known he was evil, an evil of a different sort altogether from daily evil. The same holds true, people typically think, of the Germans complicit in his designs. That's inaccurate. Hitler undoubtedly saw himself as a good man. More importantly, millions of Germans joined in Hitler's evil because it was easier to look the other way than to confront the nature of an evil they had allowed to flourish. It is always easier to shrug through life by relying on euphemisms than to stand up to the daily evil we encounter.

For Planned Parenthood, as for leftists and their head-in-the-sand allies throughout America, babies are less than the sum of their parts. For the Obama administration, as for its allies, threats to Jews can be dismissed as irrational byproducts of religious fanaticism, rather than as core goals of an immensely barbaric regime. All of these accessories to evil convince themselves that euphemistic thinking will bring harmony.

Turning a blind eye to evil, however, doesn't make it disappear. It allows it to grow. And those who allow evil to grow in order to protect their own convenience will be held accountable for the end results of the evil they facilitate.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Ben Shapiro is an attorney, a writer and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center. He is editor-at-large of Breitbart and author of the best-selling book "Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV." 

#1301 (7/29) WHY PLANNED PARENTHOOD WILL NEVER BE 'TRANSPARENT' "

"Nothing to See Here? - WHY PLANNED PARENTHOOD WILL NEVER BE 'TRANSPARENT'"- By: Eric Metaxas|Breakpoint.org: 7/29/2015;
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/12/27891?spMailingID=12003345&spUserID=MTMyMjM2ODE5OQS2&spJobID=582056113&spReportId=NTgyMDU2MTEzS0 [AS I SEE IT: Towards the end of this article, there is a mention of the movie "The Silent Scream." I first saw that movie in 1987 at a Christian worldviews retreat. Seeing a BABY on the verge of being aborted on a sonogram changed me from being a Christian who just passively knew abortion was wrong to a Christian who suddenly knew it was a moral issue every follower of Christ is called to stand against as clearly as he or she can. That film made me realize there is no place for passivity when such evil is present and legal. - Stan]

If Planned Parenthood is so concerned about being misrepresented, perhaps they should opt for transparency. I'll tell you why they wouldn’t dare.

Earlier this month, I talked about the now-infamous video of Planned Parenthood’s medical director discussing the sale of fetal body parts by that organization. Of course, Planned Parenthood denies that they traffic in body parts and insist that they are only being compensated for “processing” and “transportation.”This claim that biotech firms are just paying for “shipping and handling” is belied by a subsequent video that shows yet another Planned Parenthood official haggling over the prices of these body parts.

No doubt Planned Parenthood and its apologists will insist that pro-lifers are making much ado about nothing. They’ll recycle comparisons to surgery, childbirth, and other “gross” medical procedures and assure America that “there’s nothing to see here.”

If there’s “nothing to see here” and nothing out-of-the-ordinary going on, then I have a suggestion: Let us take a look. After all, as abortion rights advocates never tire of telling us, abortion, even late-term ones, are legal in the United States. So it’s not as though they’re incriminating themselves.

Likewise, if it’s just a “medical procedure” no different than other medical procedures that are televised and which people can watch, why not give people an opportunity to watch or not watch an abortion?

So, Planned Parenthood, go ahead and film an abortion and let the American people see it. All we’re doing is asking for transparency, especially since our tax dollars go to support your organization. While you supposedly can’t spend federal dollars directly on abortions of any kind, let alone late-terms abortions, our tax dollars help keep Planned Parenthood afloat. So why not let Americans see what their tax dollars make possible?

Again, if there’s nothing to see, then let us see the “nothing.”

Or maybe that makes the people at Planned Parenthood uncomfortable. Maybe that’s because people would actually see what it looks like to kill a living baby in utero. And the more people know about what actually happens in an abortion clinic, the less supportive they become of America’s hideous abortion regime.

This truth was summed up recently by columnist Charles Krauthammer. Writing about the Planned Parenthood videos, he said “The advent of ultrasound has coincided with a remarkable phenomenon: Of all the major social issues, abortion is the only one that has not moved toward increasing liberalization. While the legalization of drugs, the redefinition of marriage and other assertions of individual autonomy have advanced . . . abortion attitudes have remained largely static.”

That’s because ultrasound makes it impossible to deny the humanity of the unborn child and the savagery of abortion. It forces people to confront what is being “chosen” and at whose expense.

Speaking of ultrasound, I’m reasonably certain that Planned Parenthood remembers the story of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the co-founder of NARAL whose own experience with ultrasound led to his conversion to both the pro-life cause and Christianity. His 1984 film “The Silent Scream” is credited with winning many converts to the pro-life cause. Having witnessed the impact of that little bit of transparency, I suspect that Planned Parenthood isn’t likely to volunteer for more.

That being the case, the least they can do is to stop insisting that “there’s nothing to see here.” There is. It’s just that their business model depends on us not looking. 

[bold and italics emphasis mine]

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION - Check the links below for more information on the Center for Medical Progress and their revealing videos on the practices of Planned Parenthood. And now is the time to redouble efforts to promote the antithesis of Planned Parenthood clinics--your local crisis pregnancy center, where women are presented with the truth about their unborn child and what abortion really involves.
RESOURCES
"The Planned Parenthood Video: The Price of Sexual Freedom" - Eric Metaxas | BreakPoint.org | July 17, 2015;http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-archive/entry/13/27824
Center for Medical Progress website - http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/
"Dr. Mengele’s Brunch Buddy" - Rod Dreher | American Conservative | July 15, 2015;http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/dr-mengele-dr-nucatola-planned-parenthood-abortion/
"Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts" - The Center for Medical Progress | Youtube video | July 14, 2015;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjxwVuozMnU
Care Net website - www.care-net.org

# 1300 (7/28) "Planned Parenthood Faces Allegations From Former Clinic Worker in Graphic New Video"

"PLANNED PARENTHOOD FACES ALLEGATIONS FROM FORMER CLINIC WORKER IN GRAPHIC NEW VIDEO" - Kelsey Harkness / @kelseyjharkness / July 28, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/28/planned-parenthood-faces-allegations-from-former-clinic-worker-in-new-video/ [NOTE: Go to this weblink to see the video.]

A new documentary-style video was released today about Planned Parenthood’s alleged “black market” of the harvesting and selling of fetal body parts. The 12-minute video, titled “Human Capital,” features a woman who says she previously worked for a company that procured tissue and organs for Planned Parenthood clinics describing what she considers to be the profit motive involved in the harvesting of aborted fetal body parts.

Viewers should be warned that the video is graphic. There are images of aborted fetal body parts.
“I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses,” says Holly O’Donnell, who claims she fainted on her first day of work.

They [Planned Parenthood] get paid from it. They do get some kind of benefit. Under federal law, it is illegal to profit off of the sale or purchase of human fetal tissue.

The video also features undercover footage of Dr. Savita Ginde, vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Denver. Standing in the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic pathology laboratory, where fetuses are brought after abortions, Ginde suggests the clinic benefits in some way from harvesting these organs, stating payment per organ “works a little better,” according to the video. “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it,” she says. The episode, produced by the Center for Medical Progress, follows two undercover videos depicting senior Planned Parenthood officials discussing the harvesting of organs from aborted fetuses.

Planned Parenthood has adamantly denied that the organization profits off of tissue from aborted babies, and says the videos have been heavily edited to depict Planned Parenthood workers in the worst way possible.

The previous two videos triggered congressional investigations and calls to end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.

According to its annual report, Planned Parenthood received more than $500 million in taxpayer funding while performing 327,653 abortions, making it the nation’s largest abortion provider. In the coming weeks, the Center for Medical Progress is expected to release more episodes as part of its “Human Capital” series.

[bold and italics emphasis mine]

Kelsey Harkness is a news producer at The Daily Signal. Send an email to Kelsey.

"President Obama Thanks Planned Parenthood After It Sells Aborted Baby Body Parts" - 
STEVEN ERTELT, JUL 27, 2015; http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/27/president-obama-thanks-planned-parenthood-after-it-sells-aborted-baby-body-parts/
"How Planned Parenthood Gets Its Money, Explained in 90 Seconds" - Alex Anderson / @alexanderJander / July 28, 2015; http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/28/how-planned-parenthood-gets-its-money-explained-in-90-seconds/
"What These Pro-Life Groups Have to Say to Companies Donating to Planned Parenthood" - 
Kate Scanlon / @scanlon_kate / July 24, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/24/what-these-pro-life-groups-have-to-say-to-companies-donating-to-planned-parenthood/
     [Last] Tuesday, The Daily Signal published a list of companies that donate or have donated directly to Planned Parenthood, either through grants or through matching employee gifts. We used data from 2nd Vote, a website and app that tracks causes that corporations donate to.We asked each company about its donations to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
     Spokespersons for three of the companies—Coca-Cola, Ford and Xerox—objected to their inclusion on the list. When The Daily Signal provided the companies with a Planned Parenthood website listing them as donors, they said they would be contacting the organization to be removed.
     Planned Parenthood later removed all corporate donors from the site.
     Many of the companies acknowledged that they contribute to Planned Parenthood through their employee gift matching programs.

     The Daily Signal reached out to pro-life groups to ask what they would tell consumers about these companies. Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, said that “this shows how badly Planned Parenthood is hurting.”
     “A couple of years ago, businesses would have replied that they proudly supported Planned Parenthood or live in fear if they didn’t (remember what they did to the Komen Foundation?) but today they are the defense, rushing to say that they are not directly donating to Planned Parenthood but instead are giving their employees the option to donate—which is still giving money to the abortion giant,” Hawkins said. “You can’t just donate to Planned Parenthood and say your donation is earmarked for utilities or staff or paper clips but not abortion.” “The building and the staff and the utilities all contribute in some way to abortion and are involved [in] it,” Hawkins said.     “Any money whatsoever going to Planned Parenthood in any way contributes to the more than 327,000 abortions they commit every year—and who knows what else they do behind closed doors, some of which is thankfully now being revealed because of the Center for Medical Progress videos.”
          [bold and italics emphasis mine]

# 1299 (7/27) "6 Scandals Involving Planned Parenthood"

"6 SCANDALS INVOLVING PLANNED PARENTHOOD" - Samantha Reinis / @samantha_reinis / July 15, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/15/6-past-planned-parenthood-scandals/

An undercover video was released [last]Tuesday of a top official at Planned Parenthood discussing the sale of organs harvested from aborted babies.But it is not the first time a scandal has surrounded the organization.

In its 2013-14 annual report, Planned Parenthood claimed it has “come a long way” as “our movement has come so far in nearly one hundred years—and we are building momentum.” This momentum Planned Parenthood extols includes $528.4 million from government grants. According to its annual report, the organization provided 327,653 abortions nationwide and offered 1,880 adoption referrals in 2013.

Here are six instances of Planned Parenthood’s alleged corruption and abuse:

1) Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director for medical services, was caught on tape detailing what happens to organs from fetuses that have been aborted. “I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps,” Nucatola said in the undercover video. The Center for Medical Progress, a nonprofit organization devoted to medical ethics, released the video on July 14. Planned Parenthood has denied wrongdoing. “On the video, the Planned Parenthood staff member talks about standard reimbursement fees for costs associated with tissue donation programs, which every health care provider has and which the federal law provides for,” the organization said in a statement.

2) Multiple Planned Parenthood counselors advised underage teenage girls as young as 15 years old to engage in risky sexual practices, like asphyxiation and beating each other, as long as it was deemed consensual, according to an undercover investigation by the pro-life group Live Action. These counselors, according to the videos, also told the young girls to learn from watching Internet pornography and experiment by visiting sex shops, all without parental guidance. Planned Parenthood rebutted the assertion it was at fault. “This video does not reflect our education programs, the work our dedicated employees do every day, nor the experience shared by parents and teens who participate in our programs,” Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, told USA Today last year.

3) Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains was sued in 2014 for failing to report an abusive relationship in which a 13-year-old girl was being sexually abused by her stepfather, who forced her to get an abortion when she became pregnant. The complaint alleged there were multiple warning signs, such as the girl being less than the legal age of consent in Colorado, the two going by different last names and the stepfather’s pressuring the daughter to go on birth control. According to the complaint, there were allegedly multiple instances the counselors could have asked the girl about their relationship. Instead, they stayed silent and gave her an abortion and birth control, allowing her to go home with her stepfather and continue to be sexually abused. Marie Logsden, vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told The Washington Times the clinic “can never comment on the care of an individual patient, due to privacy laws and our organization’s long-standing commitment to quality and confidentiality.”

4) Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, defended infanticide in 2013 as she stated that it was the choice of the “woman, family and physician” whether the infant who survived an abortion should be allowed to live, according to a Washington Post report. Snow shared this testimony in a hearing regarding a Florida bill named Infants Born Alive. The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen added that only after a firestorm erupted in the conservative media did Planned Parenthood issue a statement that in the “extremely unlikely and highly unusual” event that a baby were born alive it would “provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.”

5) The pro-life group Live Action released a videotape of a Planned Parenthood employee in Austin, Texas, advocating for sex selective abortion, as her client described wanting only a boy. According to the Live Action video, the Planned Parenthood employee told her client to wait a few weeks to determine the gender before deciding to abort the child. “I see that you’re saying that you want to terminate if it’s a girl, so are you just wanting to continue the pregnancy in the meantime?” the Planned Parenthood counselor asked. After the video surfaced, Planned Parenthood fired the counselor, according to The Huffington Post. “Planned Parenthood insists on the highest quality patient care, and if we ever become aware of a staff member not meeting these high standards we take swift action,” a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman said in a written statement.

6) According to a Feb. 2, 2011, report from ABC News, Planned Parenthood fired a manager in 2011 after her involvement instructing a pimp and prostitute how to get around the system. As part of a sting set up by the pro-life group Live Action, a man and woman posed as sex traffickers seeking advice from Planned Parenthood workers in a New Jersey clinic. According to ABC News, the couple was overt about their work in the sex industry that involved undocumented immigrant girls. A Planned Parenthood worker encouraged them to lie about the age of the minors so that the organization would not have to legally report them to the authorities.

(This article has been modified to include denials from Planned Parenthood and to include citations where appropriate.)

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Samantha Reinis is a reporting intern for The Daily Signal and member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

#1298 (7/26) SUNDAY SPECIAL: "The Lost Art of Christian Persuasion..."

ATTENTION: Please SCROLL DOWN this page to find the article titled on this post in LARGE BRIGHT BLUE CAPITAL LETTERS. Thank you.)

[DEAR FRIEND, I just read this in an email this morning (7/24) at a conservative news website: "Coke will not contribute to Planned Parenthood and will not match employee contributions to the organ harvesters either." I don't have confirmation of this but it reminds me that as I was praying (as I do each morning) for the over 3,000 women every day who have scheduled appointments to abort their unborn child, God encouraged me that possibly through this latest PP scandal many women are giving second thoughts to abortion. Hopefully the scandal (like the revelation of partial birth abortions 12 years ago) will serve to educate more people that abortion is not about discarding unwanted tissue but of destroying live human beings. Hopefully, it will be the cause of fewer and  fewer choosing abortion as a choice! Let's be praying that is already happening! - Stan]

PRAYER MATTERS:"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." - Karl Barth; "Prayer is inviting God into a seemingly impossible situation and asking Him to accomplish His perfect and loving will." - Stan

PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14) Short of that, we should not be saying "God Bless America"but instead "God be merciful towards America!" (Feb. 24th - Rev. Franklin Graham delivered this insight to his Facebook friends yesterday, "I do know that the president defends Islam and chastises Christians, rebukes our allies and befriends our enemies, and fully supports gay marriages and abortion but denies the religious freedoms of those who don't agree. Our nation is ridiculed abroad and morally crumbling within. We are in trouble. We have turned our back on God.")

PRAY FOR OUR LEADERS:  Let's be praying that the Congress and the the President will find a way to pass legislation and enact policies that will benefit America today and future generations and NOT do any lasting harm.

S.C. Decision on Homosexual Marriage– NOTE: I cannot stress enough how we all need to be praying that the Church – ie, the individual believer and the institution itself - will respond appropriately and effectively. Despite what the mainstream media is reporting, the debate is NOT over! (42 years after the SC legalized abortion, that debate is also FAR from over!) The Court ruled wrongly BUT they do NOT speak the FINAL word; God’s Word (and GOD) does – and always will. Isaiah 40:8; Phil. 4:5-6.

World-Wide Prayer Requests:

"'We Can't Forget' Pastor Saeed's 1,000 Days in Prison" - By Abigail Robertson, June 24, 2015, http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/June/We-Cant-Forget-Pastor-Saeeds-1000-Days-in-Prison/ 
     "Pastor Saeed Abedini has been imprisoned in Iran for his Christian faith for 1,000 days, June 23... 'We cannot move forward with an Iranian nuclear deal while Pastor Saeed sits in prison as well as three other Americans,' he said. Mahoney also called upon Christians around the world to come together in prayer.
     'Pray for Saeed and his family, pray for safety for our brothers and sisters around the world, and also pray for our elected officials and President Obama that they would not be silent, ' Mahoney urged. 'We believe that as Christians pray around the world, we can see Pastor Saeed's release.' "
"DON'T LEAVE AMERICAN PASTOR SAEED BEHIND " - (5/2) - The Obama administration has stated that they would veto any Congressional action to tie the proposed nuclear deal with Pastor Saeed's release! (4/1/) - A nuclear deal with Iran could come at any time, any hour, any day. But will American Pastor Saeed be freed? His health is worsening. He continues to suffer grave threats in an Iranian prison where torture and executions are commonplace. President Obama assured Pastor Saeed’s wife that freedom for this wrongfully imprisoned U.S. citizen would be a “top priority.” Now is a critical time to continue to pressure the Obama Administration to not leave Pastor Saeed behind and urge Iran to show goodwill. Pastor Saeed is imprisoned merely because he is a Christian. He deserves to be home with his family. We continue fighting for his freedom – working in Congress, with the State Department, and with leaders across the globe. We must not forget Pastor Saeed. Sign the Petition: "Don’t Leave American Pastor Saeed Behind".; http://aclj.org/persecuted-church/dont-leave-am 

4/18/2015"Recant or Else: Saeed Faces New Psychological Torture" - By George Thomas, April 18, 2015; http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/April/Iranian-Prison-Guards-Torment-American-Pastor/ "Naghmeh [his wife] says recent prisoner executions have also taken their toll on her husband. Despite the hardships, she writes that he continues to remain strong in the faith.'He wants you all to know that the Lord continues to move in that prison and lives are being transformed!' his wife wrote on Facebook. 'That they had a great Easter in prison,' she continued. 'Saeed desperately 'missed being with our family on Easter, but new Easter traditions were created in prison!' 'Over the years this journey has truly become more difficult and painful for Saeed and for the kids and I,' she wrote. 'Our family appreciates your continued prayers.'We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States.

Urgent Petition: Defend Christians - Defeat ISIS. -  Go to http://aclj.org/jihad/say-no-to-a-third-term-of-president-obamas-failed-foreign-policy?view=donFrmB&utm_expid=7567081-8.vdNbXkfzQUyJhpww3WXtYQ.1&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign= "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted...

4/17/2015 "US Missionary Injured in Apparent Terrorist Shooting" - By Abigail Robertson, April 17, 2015; http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/April/Christian-Missionary-Wounded-in-Apparent-Terrorist-Shooting/ "A Christian missionary is fighting for her life after being shot in the head in Karachi, Pakistan, in an apparent terrorist attack. Fifity-five-year-old Debra Lobo was hit twice when four men fired shots from motorbikes as she was leaving work...The gunmen, who escaped, left a leaflet in her car with her name on it saying they had targeted her because she was American." Let's keep Debra in our prayers.

Feb. 25 -  "US Missionary Held for $300K Ransom in Nigeria" - CBNNews.com, February 25, 2015;http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/February/US-Missionary-Held-for-Ransom-in-Nigeria----/ "Phyllis Sortor, an American missionary in Nigeria, has been abducted from the Hope Academy compound in Emiworo, Kogi State. Nigerian police say her captors are asking for $300,000 in ransom. The Free Methodist Church, Sortor's sponsoring denomination, reports that the U.S. State Department and FBI are working with Nigerian authorities to find and rescue her. Kidnappings for ransom are common in Nigeria and most victims are returned unharmed. It's also possible that the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram is involved, although it operates mainly in the northeastern corner of Nigeria and Sotor was kidnapped in the central part of the country..."

 Save Christian Mom Asia Bibi from Execution - A Christian mom has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for her faith. Asia Bibi was falsely accused of “blasphemy” – speaking against the prophet Muhammad. Now this wife and mother of five will hang for her Christian faith.She would be the first woman executed under Pakistan’s Shariah blasphemy law.This is the ultimate human rights violation. We’re mobilizing our international affiliate – the European Centre for Law and Justice – and its partner in Pakistan to stop this atrocity. Add your name to our letter to the government of Pakistan demanding Asia Bibi’s freedom.Go to http://aclj.org/persecuted-church/save-christian-mom-asia-bibi-from-execution; please add your signature to mine and over 35,000 others AND pray for Asia Bibi.

PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)

/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray: 

*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.

*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church']  as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.

*That President Obama would use wisdom in crafting our  foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.

Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.

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"THE LOST ART OF CHRISTIAN PERSUASION - OS GUINNESS’S 'FOOL’S TALK' " - By: John Stonestreet| Breakpoint.org: July 20, 2015;
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/12/27826?spMailingID=11920303&spUserID=MTMyMjM2ODE5OQS2&spJobID=581407388&spReportId=NTgxNDA3Mzg4S0 [NOTE: This is a great follow-up to the article I posted LAST SUNDAY (7/19, #1251) that asked if "evangelism [is] on the wane?")

How do we communicate the Gospel in an increasingly anti-Gospel world? One of the leading Christian thinkers of our day has some ideas.

One of the great things about working for the Colson Center is that each summer we work with outstanding college interns. And our interns aren’t here doing filing and fetching coffee. When they show up, we put their developing skills to productive work: writing for our blog at BreakPoint.org, helping us with social media, and other ways that further our mission.

And one of our interns, Leah Hickman, who attends Hillsdale College, beat me to the punch on something I’ve been wanting to do on BreakPoint, and that’s review Os Guinness’s new book: “Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion.”

In her review at BreakPoint.org, Leah hits on something I think that all of us feel or think with a growing frequency these days. And that’s frustration: Frustration about our inability to communicate the truth and the beauty of the Gospel in this increasingly anti-Christian culture.

“I hardly know how to approach apologetics and evangelism anymore,” Leah writes. “No one seems to really care about truth . . . and how can you explain the truth of God’s Word with people who think that everything” is a matter of opinion? Leah identifies a fear that many of us have: “[H]ow do you tell someone that their beliefs are wrong and that they need Jesus without offending them or scaring them off? And what if I’m an ineffective debater and can’t win the arguments? They’ll never come to Christ that way. It will only drive them away.”

Well, happily for Leah, and for us, Os Guinness has written “Fool’s Talk” specifically to address these issues and to help us recapture what he calls the art of Christian persuasion. Guinness makes it clear from the start his book is not about technique; it’s not a step-by-step guide on “apologetics for dummies.” As he asserts, there is no “surefire, foolproof approach to sharing the faith.”

Instead, Guinness offers us an approach that’s based on and flows from a thoroughly Christian worldview. He writes, “True to the biblical understanding of creation, Christian persuasion must always take account of the human capacity for reason and the primacy of the human heart.” Because of the fall, “Christian persuasion must always take account of the anatomy of an unbelieving mind in its denial of God.”

And because of the incarnation, “Christian persuasion always has to be primarily person-to-person and face-to-face, and not argument to argument . . . media to media or methodology to methodology. “And true to the Holy Spirit, Christian persuasion must always know and show that the decisive power is not ours but God’s.”

Guinness also wants us to understand that the Scriptures themselves use a variety of means to communicate truth—and so should we. “The Bible has a high place,” he writes, “for rational arguments as well as for stories, drama, parables, and poetry. The Bible contains the book of Romans as well as the psalms of David and the parables of Jesus.”

Throughout the book, Guinness illustrates how the great persuaders reached their audience: From Jesus, to Socrates, to Augustine, and of course Lewis and Chesterton. But he is also unafraid to use great atheist persuaders as examples, like Nietzsche and even Norman Mailer.

Now, this is not a book you’ll be able to absorb in one sitting. It’s a book that demands prayerful attention. But it’s also a book that can ease frustrations about communicating the Gospel. That’s because, as Guinness reminds us, in the end, Christian persuasion is “not for salesmen, propagandists . . . spin doctors . . . and the like.” The art of Christian persuasion “is for those who desire to share the way of Jesus because of their love for Jesus, and who know that love is also a key part of any human being’s search for knowledge and truth.”

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

RESOURCES
Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion - Os Guinness | IVP Books | July 2015;http://www.colsoncenterstore.org/product.asp?sku=9780830836994
"People, Not Playdough: A Fresh Perspective on Apologetics from Os Guinness" - Leah Hickman | BreakPoint Blog | July 6, 2015;http://www.breakpoint.org/features-columns/articles/entry/12/27751
The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus - Dallas Willard | HarperOne | February 2015; http://www.colsoncenterstore.org/product.asp?sku=9780062114082

# 1297 (7/25) PRO-LIFE SAT - "A Demonic View of 'Dignity'..."

"A Demonic View of 'Dignity' - CHOICE, CONTROL, & AUTONOMY" - By: Eric Metaxas| Breakpoint.org: July 21, 2015;
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/12/27839?spMailingID=11924548&spUserID=MTMyMjM2ODE5OQS2&spJobID=581432194&spReportId=NTgxNDMyMTk0S0

Where does human dignity come from? This isn’t an academic question. It’s a matter of life and death.

A few weeks ago, I told you on BreakPoint that the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage, had placed our culture on a well-greased slope. All that was lacking, I said, was for someone to give it a push.Well, the pushing has begun in earnest.

Earlier this month, the Washington, D.C., City Council held hearings on the “Death With Dignity Act,” which was introduced by Council member Mary Cheh. Despite the positive-sounding title, the bill would make assisted suicide legal in the nation’s capital.Under the bill, a person with a terminal diagnosis of six or less months can, upon the confirmation of two doctors, obtain a lethal dose of drugs, which they could then administer to themselves.

This kind of legislation is a terrible idea: As the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson has written, wherever physician-assisted suicide becomes legal, “safeguards purporting to minimize [the risk of killing people against their will] have proved to be inadequate and have often been watered down or eliminated.” This is a well-documented fact, not an opinion. Yet at least eighteen states and the District of Columbia are considering legalizing physician-assisted suicide.

Why? The answer lies in Council member Cheh’s justification for the bill. This is important, stick with me: She told a local radio station that the issue “is basically a matter of choice and control and autonomy.” She added that “When I am facing impending death . . . with whatever pain and lack of dignity that they involve, I may involve this.”

Choice. Control. Autonomy. Dignity. It’s hard to imagine four more seductive words in contemporary American culture. As Justice Kennedy intimated in Obergefell, autonomy—which for him requires control over the choices we make with our lives—is a prerequisite for dignity, whether we’re talking about whom we marry, or as Cheh and others suggest, when we die.

That prompts an obvious question: What about the people who are dependent on others for their care? In what sense can the intellectually-disabled and many of the physically-disabled be said to exercise “choice” and “control” over the lives? The answer is “very little, if any.” And that leaves them, by Kennedy’s and Cheh’s criteria, without dignity.

That’s why some of the biggest opponents of physician-assisted suicide are those representing the disabled. These include Samantha Crane of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, who told the same radio station Cheh spoke to that people with disabilities “are facing a lot of messages that life with a disability—if you need a lot of care—is not dignified or worth living.”

“Not worth living.” Where have we heard that before? Well, I’ll tell you: the Nazis viewed the disabled as Lebensunwertes Leben, “life unworthy of life.” Between 1939 and 1941, more than 70,000 intellectually and physically disabled people were exterminated, the opening act in the Nazis demonic assault on the sanctity of human life.

Seventy years later, the Nazis may be the only example of evil all Americans can agree on. Yet here we are, borrowing a page from their worldview book! We’re embracing ideas about what gives meaning and dignity to human life, seemingly unaware of where those ideas can and will lead.

Friends, human dignity does not derive from what we can do, produce, or control. Human dignity derives from the fact that God made us in His image. All human beings have, by birth and breath, dignity. Period.

That’s why we must resist physician-assisted suicide and why we must never grow weary of pushing back against the twisted ideas about human dignity that make it possible.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

RESOURCES
"Greasing the Slippery Slope: The Court, Autonomy, and Anything Goes" - Eric Metaxas | BreakPoint.org | July 2, 2015;http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-search/entry/13/27713
"Always Care, Never Kill: The Dangers of Physician-Assisted Suicide" - Eric Metaxas | BreakPoint.org | March 30, 2015;http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-search/entry/13/27113
"The Language of Assisted Suicide: Deception Instead of Dignity" - John Stonestreet | BreakPoint.org | February 27, 2014;http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-search/entry/13/24643
"Humanity in the Balance: History and 'Lives Not Worth Living'" - Chuck Colson | BreakPoint.org | January 23, 2003;http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-search/entry/13/10976
"Four Problems with Physician-Assisted Suicide" - Ryan Anderson | Heritage Foundation | March 30, 2015;http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/03/four-problems-with-physician-assisted-suicide
Life's Worth: The Case Against Assisted Suicide - Arthur Dyck, Dennis Hollinger, Francis Beckwith | Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company | November 2002
The Good Life - Chuck Colson | Tyndale | May 2005

# 1296 (7/24) "13 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger"

"13 THINGS YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW ABOUT PLANNNED PARENTHOOD FOUNDER MARGARET SANGER" - - Kate Scanlon / @scanlon_kate / July 22, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/22/13-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-planned-parenthood-founder-margaret-sanger/ [NOTE: If you go to this weblink, at the bottom you will be able to watch the 25 minute interview with Margaret Sanger done in 1957.QUESTION: Have you ever heard Planned Parenthood renounce any of these statements made by "one of their heroes?" - Stan]

Margaret Sanger,the founder of Planned Parenthood. (Photo: CSU Archives/Everett Collection/Newscom)

Planned Parenthood, engulfed in a scandal following the release of two undercover videos, is the largest abortion provider in the United States. 

On its website, the organization compliments Margaret Sanger as one of the pro-choice movement’s “great heroes.” Sanger started the American Birth Control League in 1921; it became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. Planned Parenthood praises Sanger for “providing contraception and other health services” and “advancing access to family planning in the United States and around the world.” In addition to Planned Parenthood, Sanger also founded the Birth Control Review, a journal about contraception and population control.

Here are 13 things Sanger said during her lifetime.
1) She proposed allowing Congress to solve “population problems” by appointing a “Parliament of Population.” “Directors representing the various branches of science [in the Parliament would] … direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of the individuals.” —“A Plan for Peace,” Birth Control Review, April 1932, pages 107-108

2) Sanger called the various methods of population control, including abortion, “defending the unborn against their own disabilities.” —“A Plan for Peace,” Birth Control Review, April 1932, pages 107-108

3) Sanger believed that the United States should “keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, Insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.” —“A Plan for Peace,” Birth Control Review, April 1932, pages 107-108

4) Sanger advocated “a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” —“A Plan for Peace,” Birth Control Review, April 1932, pages 107-108

5) People whom Sanger considered unfit, she wrote, should be sent to “farm lands and homesteads” where “they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.” —“A Plan for Peace,” Birth Control Review, April 1932, pages 107-108

6) She was an advocate of a proposal called the “American Baby Code.” “The results desired are obviously selective births,” she wrote. According to Sanger, the code would “protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit.” —“America Needs a Code for Babies,” March 27, 1934, Margaret Sanger Papers, Library of Congress, 128:0312B

7) While advocating for the American Baby Code, she argued that marriage licenses should provide couples with the right to only “a common household” but not parenthood. In fact, couples should have to obtain a permit to become parents: Article 3. A marriage license shall in itself give husband and wife only the right to a common household and not the right to parenthood. Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit for parenthood. Article 5. Permits for parenthood shall be issued upon application by city, county, or state authorities to married couples, providing they are financially able to support the expected child, have the qualifications needed for proper rearing of the child, have no transmissible diseases, and, on the woman’s part, no medical indication that maternity is likely to result in death or permanent injury to health. Article 6. No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth.“All that sounds highly revolutionary, and it might be impossible to put the scheme into practice,” Sanger wrote. She added: “What is social planning without a quota?” —“America Needs a Code for Babies,” March 27, 1934, Margaret Sanger Papers, Library of Congress, 128:0312B

8) She believed that large families were detrimental to society. “The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families. The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children,” she wrote. “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it,” she continued. —“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 5: The Wickedness of Creating Large Families

9) She argued that motherhood must be “efficient.” “Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives,” Sanger wrote. —“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 18: The Goal

10) Population control, she wrote, would bring about the “materials of a new race.”“If we are to develop in America a new race with a racial soul, we must keep the birth rate within the scope of our ability to understand as well as to educate. We must not encourage reproduction beyond our capacity to assimilate our numbers so as to make the coming generation into such physically fit, mentally capable, socially alert individuals as are the ideal of a democracy,” Sanger wrote. —“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 3: The Materials of the New Race

11) Sanger wrote that an excess in population must be reduced. “War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap,” she wrote.Mothers, “at whatever cost, she must emerge from her ignorance and assume her responsibility.” —“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 1: Woman’s Error and Her Debt

12) “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” Sanger wrote. —Letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble on Dec., 10, 1939

13) In an interview with Mike Wallace in 1957, Sanger said, “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world, that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically.” “Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin—that people can—can commit,” she said.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Kate Scanlon is a news reporter for The Daily Signal and graduate of The Heritage Foundation's Young Leaders Program.

# 1295 (7/23) "Seven Questions for Abortion Supporters in Light of the Planned Parenthood Scandal"

"SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR ABORTION SUPPORTERS IN LIGHT OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD SCANDAL" 
- Jerry Newcombe | Jul 22, 2015;
http://townhall.com/columnists/jerrynewcombe/2015/07/22/seven-questions-for-abortion-supporters-in-light-of-the-planned-parenthood-scandal-n2028984/page/full

Unless you’ve been in a cave the last few days or you only get your news from the mainstream media, I am sure you are well aware of the Planned Parenthood scandal exposed by a secret videotape.Over dinner and a glass of wine, a Planned Parenthood doctor casually explains how they can sometimes preserve body parts of the unborn babies that can be sold. She glibly discusses how they sell the heart, the lungs, the liver.

My colleague at the ministry, John Rabe, made a great point the other day about this scandal. Either it will cause a great shift in the national debate on abortion or it will show us the great searing of the American conscience. In light of this egregious revelation, here are seven questions I’d like to pose for those who support abortion:

1) If the unborn babies are not human, then why is there a market for their body parts? Why would anyone want the heart of a “blob of tissue”? Who cares about the lungs of a “POC” (Product of Conception)? How can a mere “blob of tissue” even have a heart or lungs? Indeed, one thing this scandal does is underscore the humanity of the unborn. Though some try to dehumanize them by calling the unborn fetuses, fetus comes from the Latin foedus, and it means “unborn baby.”

2) Do the mothers undergoing the abortion know what is happening to the remains of their dead babies? In fact, how can one retain the maternal instinct and participate in the deliberate destruction of the unborn in the first place? As Mother Teresa once asked, “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell others not to kill one another?”

3) For those who think being pro-abortion rights is the compassionate position, for those who claim to care about those whom Jesus called “the least of these,” how can you be in favor of the wanton slaughter of the unborn? To find out that some of these dead babies are being stripped for body parts for profit adds insult to injury.

4)If you say it’s okay to go ahead and sell human parts of the unborn babies for profit, where does society draw the line? Who’s to say an assisted-care facility should not sell parts from deceased patients for profit? Perhaps they could even speed up death in the interest of making money. There is no limit to the evil that could be done if this is acceptable.

5) If these aren’t little unborn babies being killed in the Planned Parenthood clinics, then how come someone at the clinic after each abortion has to reassemble all the parts of the aborted baby to make sure nothing is left in the womb, which could cause an infection? Pro-life activist Carol Everett used to work in the abortion field. She once told me, “In the front counseling room, the young woman is asking, ‘Is it a baby?’ And she’s being told, ‘No.’ But in the back, every single baby, as early as it can be done, has to be put back together---the arms, legs, hands, feet, the head, and the spine---to be sure it’s all there. It is a baby.”

6) How do they avoid the comparisons to what the Nazis did to those human beings whom they devalued and treated as subhuman? In the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer dedicates about a dozen pages (pp. 979-991) to some of the medical experiments the Nazis conducted on human beings, usually Jews, in the concentration camps. For example, experiments were done on men and women, exposing them to freezing conditions to see how soon they would die. All the data was carefully timed and recorded. Any objecting medical personnel with a bothered conscience were removed from their posts by S.S. Chief Heinrich Himmler because they were impeding the (supposed) greater good.

7) Why should Planned Parenthood get a lot of their money from taxes? Why should we the people be forced to support such a dehumanizing organization? I asked George Grant, who wrote the book on Planned Parenthood years ago---Grand Illusions---for a statement on the scandal from his perspective. He wrote me: “As you can imagine, like so many I was shocked…Even so, I was not surprised. Both the grisly business of the abortion monolith and its blithe nonchalance in the face of the gruesome reality have been Planned Parenthood’s stock-and-trade since the time of its notorious founder, Margaret Sanger.”  [bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

In short, it’s time to stop dehumanizing the unborn. As Mother Teresa put it, “Abortion is a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved.”

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Dr. Jerry Newcombe is a key archivist of the D. James Kennedy Legacy Library and a Christian TV producer.

# 1294 (7/22) "Planned Profits: New Video Casts Doubts on Group's Claims"

"PLANNED PROFITS:NEW VIDEO CASTS DOUBTS ON GROUP'S CLAIMS" - by Tony Perkins, Washington Update, July 21, 2015, http://www.frc.org/updatearticle/20150721/dealing-death
While Planned Parenthood is being investigated, President Obama is tightening federal funding rules -- for pro-lifers! That's right. After three congressional committees and seven states have launched probes into a possible organ harvesting ring, the White House is not only ignoring the scandal -- but focusing its fire on organizations providing real care to women.

When the rest of the country's attention is on an organization who may be peddling parts for profit, the President is finalizing rules to stop faith-based groups from getting a dime of federal funding. Their crime? Believing that all life has value and refusing to refer women to groups who disagree. In a jab at organizations like Catholic Charities, HHS quietly disqualified pro-life groups from sex trafficking victim grants unless they offer "the full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care," (read: abortion referrals). On the other hand, if you aid and abet sex traffickers, the government will happily write your organization a check for a half-billion taxpayer dollars a year!

Of course, the timing of the rules couldn't be worse from a PR standpoint -- not that the President cares about that sort of thing. On Monday, White House Secretary Josh Earnest shrugged off an undercover video so revolting that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he'd "vomit" just talking about it. Asked if the President would reconsider federal funding to a group that may be endangering women to farm out their babies' organs, Earnest said, "No. Next question." Two seconds. That's all the time this administration could spare for the profound inhumanity on display at the clinics of his closest ally.

Unfortunately for the President, this issue isn't going away any time soon -- not with a second video making headlines this morning. The footage opens with Cecile Richards's insistence that Planned Parenthood doesn't profit from the sale of human remains, then proceeds to cast serious doubts on her claim in a lengthy lunch with another of Richards's top executives. Filmed earlier this year, the President of Planned Parenthood's Medical Directors' Council spends the majority of the time casually bartering over baby organ prices like trinkets at a local bazaar.

Of course, the negotiations wouldn't be necessary if Planned Parenthood truly didn't profit from the sales. Instead, the rates were quite fluid -- so much so that at one point, the group's executive said, "If it's low, then we can bump it up. But it has to be big enough that it's worthwhile to me." After some back-and-forth -- in which the Planned Parenthood rep admits she wants to do more than "break even" -- the group settles on $100 per piece.

But the price wasn't the only thing that was negotiable. So was the abortion technique. As in the first video, this woman was very open to changing abortion protocol to protect the babies' most valuable parts. "I wouldn't object to asking Ian, who's our surgeon who does the cases, to use an IPAS [manual vacuum aspirator] at that gestational age in order to increase the odds that he's going to get an intact specimen." That means, she explains, "using a less crunchy technique to get more whole specimens." When the "buyers" asked about the legality of it, the doctor seemed unconcerned. "To me, that's kind of a specious little argument." After all, she explains, other companies come in during the procedure to scavenge what they need -- keeping Planned Parenthood's hands clean in the process.

That will be more difficult now, especially as Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are digging deeper into the grisly side business. Letters have already landed at NIH, local medical buyers, Planned Parenthood, Attorney General Loretta Lynch's office, and HHS headquarters -- all demanding answers on possible criminal activity. Like a wounded animal, Planned Parenthood lashed out at the Center for Medical Progress, arguing to the House Energy and Commerce Committee that CMP is the one who broke the law by exposing this. But Congress isn't fooled. And neither is the American public. According to Rasmussen's latest poll, only 25% can rationalize their ghoulish practice.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood insists, "We're not in it for the money." If that's true, then it doesn't need ours. Sign FRC's petition asking Congress to put the emergency brakes on all Planned Parenthood funding until we know the full extent of its involvement in the dark world of organ trafficking.[http://www.frc.org/alert/help-shine-a-light-on-the-business-of-death]

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

"Meet the 41 Companies That Donate Directly to Planned Parenthood" - Melissa Quinn / @MelissaQuinn97 / July 21, 2015;http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/21/meet-the-41-companies-that-donate-directly-to-planned-parenthood/ [AS I SEE IT: Note particularly the ones I've marked below in italics - not exactly groups you might associate with abortion. As are as the others, it makes me sick that I've had and am forced to continue to have an association with companies that give to this despicable organization. - Stan]

"... Adobe, American Cancer Society, American Express, AT&T, Avon, Bank of America, Bath & Body Works, Ben & Jerry’s, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Converse, Deutsche Bank, Dockers, Energizer, Expedia, ExxonMobil, Fannie Mae, Ford, Groupon, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, La Senza, Levi Strauss, Liberty Mutual, Macy’s, March of Dimes, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Oracle, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Progressive, Starbucks, Susan G. Komen, Tostitos, Unilever, United Way, Verizon, Wells Fargo, Xerox."

# 1293 (7/21) "Don't Be Fooled by the Media; This Isn't About Trump"

"DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE MEDIA; THIS ISN'T ABOUT TRUMP" - David Limbaugh | Jul 21, 2015; http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2015/07/21/dont-be-fooled-by-the-media-this-isnt-about-trump-n2027986/page/full [AS I SEE IT: You may notice that I have not yet posted one article or made one comment about the many who are already running for the Presidency which isn't for another 15 months. However, I appreciate this article pointing out how the mainstream media is good at focusing our attention away from the important issues of these days and onto the trivial, esp. as it causes conservative candidates to be drawn into attacking each other. You can be sure this is not the first time nor will it be the last time they do this. I post this article as a warning to not be drawn into the distractions of the liberal media from the issues that truly warrant our attention. - Stan]

Is anyone concerned that the media have succeeded in using a flap between Donald Trump and John McCain to divert our attention from serious issues facing the nation?

Trump has been very outspoken in recent weeks on certain issues, especially immigration. His unfiltered remarks have resonated with people, driving him high in the polls among the GOP hopefuls. I don't think for a second this means Trump has a realistic chance of getting the GOP presidential nomination, much less winning the presidency, but it is a powerful indication that people are tired of what's been going on in the country. In supporting Trump, people are rebelling against political correctness and the refusal of the political class to control our borders.
People are also tired of leftists controlling the narrative and bullying conservatives into silence. They see Trump as a refreshing figure who is unafraid to fight back. That doesn't mean they agree with everything he says.

Concerning the McCain-Trump altercation, McCain drew first blood, calling Trump's supporters "crazies." Trump went too far in firing back with "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, OK?" The leftist media immediately pounced on this, gleefully turning it into a feeding frenzy against GOP candidates. Their goal was to force each candidate either to condemn Trump, which presumably would hurt Trump, or to defend him, which would hurt those candidates.

Few would defend Trump's remarks, but how about McCain's? Is McCain forever excused because of Trump's overreaction? McCain can pretend he used "crazies" as a term of affection, but he and his fellow establishment elites do think immigration hawks are crazies. That's right; they home in on Trump's outrages, but their real beef is with conservatives.

There is nothing crazy about believing that a sovereign nation ought to control its borders. There is nothing crazy in insisting that immigration occur through the proper legal channels, which include learning about our uniquely glorious heritage and endorsing the American idea. Any non-suicidal nation would require these at a minimum. The federal government's deliberate sabotaging of border control is what is outright nuts.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone complained about conservative candidates always falling for the liberal media's gotcha questions and allowing them to hijack the narrative. "Just refuse to play their game," they say. Well, Sen. Ted Cruz is refusing.

When the media pressed him to condemn Trump, he refused to take the bait, yet he stated that he highly respects McCain's war record and honors all United States veterans. By doing so, Cruz is sending multiple messages: 1) He does not agree with Trump or condone the insulting remarks. 2) He adores the U.S. military and veterans. 3) Regardless, he refuses to be ensnared and diverted to nonissues. 4) He won't say anything to dampen the enthusiasm of patriots who've had their fill of President Obama's destructive policies. And 5) he will stay on message and control his own political campaign.

It's unfortunate that some have denounced Cruz as a moral coward for refusing to condemn Trump. That is absurd. He needn't condemn the indefensible to prove he's not a moral coward. He's making the larger point that we must stay focused on the issues. We never will if we continue to defer to those who believe that Caitlyn Jenner is more newsworthy than Iran, which is, with our help, moving giant steps closer to becoming a nuclear power.

Instead of faux fretting over Trump, could we please stay focused on Obama's disgraceful nuclear deal with Iran, his attempted end run around Congress by taking it to the United Nations first and his stunning indifference to freeing $150 billion to the diabolical Iranian regime to fund global terrorism?

While we are all scrambling to castigate Trump to prove our moral bona fides, we are ignoring that the federal government subsidizes Planned Parenthood and the group's harvesting of human organs. We are overlooking Obama's pernicious plan for the federal government to amass shockingly detailed information about U.S. citizens for collection in racial databases that will be used to stir up racial discord in the name of "diversity" when Obama leaves office. We are allowing Obama to get away, once again, with refusing to identify the murderer of U.S. service members as a Muslim terrorist.

There are so many disturbing things going on we don't have time to keep up with all of them even if we aren't diverted over what GOP candidate A said about GOP candidate B.

No, I won't defend some of Trump's statements, but nor will I call his supporters "crazies." If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he and his supporters would be considered crazies and extremists. Meanwhile, the people who are truly doing crazy stuff have become the new normal. The ordinarily unflappable traditionalist, America-loving citizens have had it with being vilified and muzzled while real craziness is elevated to normal. They appreciate Trump's outspokenness in the midst of such widespread cowardice and surrender on our side -- even if they don't approve of all his comments.

Could we please stay focused on the real issues? It would be hard to overstate how momentous these matters are to the future of this nation.

[bold and italics emphasis mine]
 
David Limbaugh, brother of radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, is an expert on law and politics. He recently authored the New York Times best-selling book: "Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel."

#1292 (7/20) "Major Breaking News: Males Are Not Females"

"MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: MALES ARE NOT FEMALES" - Michael Brown | Jul 18, 2015;
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2015/07/18/major-breaking-news-males-are-not-females-n2027035/page/full [AS I SEE IT: While I vowed not to watch the ESPY awards last week mainly because I strongly disagree with the awarding of their "courage" award to Bruce (wearing a dress doesn't change who he is) Jenner, I was channel-flipping later and caught just part of his acceptance speech. (Question: How "courageous" is it when you largely get affirmation for your action and those who question you are vilified?) I was outraged to hear him encouraging young teens who are going through gender confusion to also do as he did. Those struggling in such a way need to get the help of counseling and not simply give in to the new societal norms. It greatly upsets me that such advice coming from a celebrity will end up hurting many young people. It upsets me more that I haven't heard one other person publicly express such outrage. - Stan]

I was filling out a form at the doctor’s office the other day when I was reminded of a stark truth: Biological, genetic males will never be females, no matter how much surgery they have and no matter how many hormones they take. The medical form had a line that said: “FEMALES: Time of last menstruation?” – and in a flash, I said to myself, Yes! There really are differences between males and females! [I had the same experience when filling out a form at the blood bank. - Stan]

And that’s another reason why Bruce Jenner will never be a woman, no matter how hard he tries. (Let me pause for a moment for all those who want to shout, “Bigot! Hater! Transphobe! You’re worse than Hitler!” Go ahead and get that out of your system, then you can keep reading. But feel free to pause every so often to vent your feelings.)

I was reminded of this stark reality again when my son-in-law Jimmy played part of the video of Bruce Jenner’s acceptance speech for his ESPY’s courage award.Jimmy had pulled up the clip on his cell phone, and I was sitting next to him when I heard a man speaking. It was only when I looked over at his phone that I realized who the man was – now looking like a strangely disfigured woman – and Jimmy said to me, “It looks like a joke, but everyone is going along with it.” But of course.

To not go along with this – no, let me take this a step farther – to not celebrate this wonderful moment is to be a mean-spirited, close-minded bigot of the worst kind. Even if you’re not smiling broadly enough and clapping vociferously enough when “Caitlyn” Jenner is announced is to mark yourself as a bigot (just ask former NFL icon Brett Favre - http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/2015/07/ex-jet_brett_favre_called_out_by_jenn_sterger_over.html).
And God forbid you say, “I just know that's Bruce Jenner and I'll leave it at that,” as former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield said. The vitriol directed at Holyfield for uttering these simple, common sense words is vicious beyond description, but it’s fully justified, of course, because he’s being judgmental.

It’s a good thing for the world of sports that Jenner isn’t a young, world class athlete today. Otherwise, the Olympic committee and other sports organizations would have to decide if this athletically gifted male could compete with females. Would they dare be transphobic and bigoted and tell him he couldn’t?

These issues have already come up in the world of combat sports, where a so-called male-to-female fighter has been dominating his female opponents to the point that some have openly complained and others have refused to fight him. Is this really fair? It appears that the female fighters involved are not impressed with the testimony of medical experts who have declared that this biological male, because of female hormones, has no physical advantage over his opponents.

The absurd, even surreal nature of this discussion is underscored by an article that appeared on the website for KOAT News, an ABC affiliate in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The headline reads, “Birth certificate keeps transgender student off volleyball court,” and the story begins with these touching words: “Like many teenage girls, Alex Trujillo likes makeup, has teen idols and stays active. “Yet, she can't play on the girl's volleyball team at Laguna-Acoma High School. School officials say that's because Trujillo was born a male.” How bigoted and discriminatory! How utterly transphobic!

How can this be? The school will not let this biological male play on the girls’ volleyball team and compete against other girls simply because of a piece of paper?The article, which always refers to him as her, states that “she isn't free to play the sport she has a passion for,” explaining that, “The gender on student's birth certificate dictates which team he or she will play for, according to the New Mexico Athletic Association. In New Mexico, someone can amend their birth certificate but only after reassignment surgery.”

Did you catch that? The gender on the birth certificate dictates what side you play on. To be precise, it’s whether you are male or female that dictates what side you play on, because males have athletic advantages over females, and the birth certificate simply notes whether you are male or female. Even after sex-change surgery, those advantages and differences largely (or completely) remain, which means that you still should not be able to switch sides in sports. But even with the allowance for changing one’s birth certificate after sex-change surgery, which is still outrageous, this wasn’t enough for transgender advocates, who say that the New Mexico laws are “unfair because not everyone opts to have that surgery.”

Once again, we are catering to social insanity, and if we really care about Alex (or about Bruce Jenner or about countless others who struggle deeply with gender identity issues), we must stop collaborating with this social madness and do whatever we can to help them find wholeness from the inside out.

The news of the last few days – from the New Mexico story to the prestigious ESPY awards – reminds us that we have our work cut out for us.

Who is going to drink the Kool-Aid next? At least each of us can say, “Not me!”

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]